Last week, the gubernatorial campaigns of Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrat Phil Angelides filled my e-mail inbox with missives about college fee increases in California, the question of what constitutes a tax increase and a reminder that this fall there will be no new increase in fees.
It was an interesting exchange, touched off by Schwarzenegger's assertion that he hasn't raised taxes and his explanation that he twice raised fees because "the college tuition fees were too low in comparison with the rest of the country."
Then, at the end of the week, my wife and I received another e-mail, this one from myaccount@ucdavis.edu. It informed us that the statement for our son's fall quarter fees was now ready, and that we have until Sept. 21 to pay up.
That last message, of course, hit home, provoking some questions:
What is the story about college fees in California? How much have they gone up, who raised them, and were they in fact "too low"?
Here's the deal: In 2002, when my son, Brennan, was ending his sophomore year in high school and first thinking about attending a University of California campus, the annual fees were $2,716.
This year, as he prepares to begin his junior year at the University of California, Davis, the annual fees are $5,406. That's a 99 percent increase over five years.
Put another way, our college savings fund that five years ago looked as if it might just be enough to pay for four years of a UC education has pretty much been cleaned out after two years. That's what happens when the price of something doubles: You can only afford half as much.
Was it Gov. Schwar-zenegger who raided our college fund?
Yes, but it was even more the work of former Gov. Gray Davis.
The big jump came in the 2003-04 academic year, when fees went up 50 percent, or $1,420, in a single year.
Over the following two years, Schwarzenegger tacked on another $1,135 increase.
So, if one considers an increase in college fees a tax increase, then Schwarzenegger has raised this family's taxes by a cumulative total of $2,970 ($700 in 2004-05, and $1,135 each in 2005-06 and 2006-07) during his three years in office.
To be accurate, that figure must be reduced by taxes we didn't pay as a result of Schwarzenegger's decision to abolish an increase in the vehicle license fee that had been scheduled to take effect in 2004.
Because we are a middle-class family paying for one college education and saving for another, there are no expensive cars in our driveway. We get around in an eight-year-old Honda and a six-year-old Saturn. As a result, for us the vehicle license fee isn't that big a deal.
For our two cars combined, we pay only about $125 a year in vehicle license fees. We'd have paid about $250 more each year, or a total of $1,000 through 2007, had Schwarzenegger not made the cut.
Thus, for us, the net cumulative increase under Schwarzenegger is $1,970.
Is it fair to call a college fee increase a "tax increase"? That's a legitimate question because, clearly, only those who attend have to pay. On the other hand, higher education has always been a core service of state government. Remember when it used to be free? That used to be a source of civic pride.
And were California college fees "too low"? Clearly, they had been below the national norm. Now, fees at the University of California are almost at par with the national average of $5,491 a year for public universities.
Then again, per capita property taxes in California remain 11 percent below the national average. The last person associated with Schwarzenegger to publicly suggest property taxes were "too low in comparison with the rest of the country" was Warren Buffett - and he was immediately ordered by the governor to do push-ups as penance for uttering such blasphemy.
Looking over those e-mails from last week, I'm still not sure whether fees at state colleges technically qualify as a tax. And who am I to say whether fees used to be too low, or whether they're now too high?
But I do know this. Parents who had a child graduate from high school in 1999, attend one of the University of California campuses and come out with a degree four years later paid the state $10,999 in fees. If our son, who left high school in 2004, gets a bachelor's degree in four years, it will cost my wife and me - assuming no increase next year - $21,189.
Two California couples, five years apart, each receiving the exact same service from the state. We will pay almost twice as much.
At our house, that certainly feels like a fairly hefty tax increase.
